Despite election losses, waning public support, climate groups, politicians say won’t change plans

For supporters of the climate agenda and net-zero policies, there’s been a deluge of bad news lately. The United Nations annual climate conference, COP29, failed to live up to activists’ ideals. The United Nations conceded in October that no progress has been made toward net zero. And in the United States, voters elected a president who has brazenly called climate change a hoax. 

Gabriella Hoffman, director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), told Just the News that climate change hung as a minor issue in the back of voters’ minds, while the state of the economy and inflation were the issues that influenced their decisions. 

“The American public made their voices heard and repudiated all of these net-zero climate policies of the last four years of the Biden-Harris administration,” Hoffman said. 

Undeterred

Despite signs that the climate agenda isn’t selling anymore, at least the way anti-fossil fuel advocates want, many climate-aligned politicians and activists are swearing they’ll continue the fight as if the election and public opinion were still in their favor. 

“President-elect Trump won the election, but his billionaire oil and gas cronies don’t get to rule,” Natural Resource Defense Council President Manish Bapna declared on Nov. 5, the day Trump won reelection. 

Bapna vowed that the NRDC will ramp up litigation efforts to push back against any attempts to roll back the climate agenda of the Biden-Harris administration. 

“If he [Trump] tries to roll back urgently needed climate gains, or follow his radical Project 2025 roadmap to environmental ruin, we’ll stand up for the environment and public health – in the court of public opinion and in our courts of law,” Bapna said. 

The NRDC release didn’t provide any data showing support for the organization’s anti-fossil fuel stance. 

Polls consistently show that voters are concerned about climate change, but the issue falls way down the list on their priorities. Surveys that ask Americans how much they’re willing to spend to address climate change find rapidly dropping support. A 2021 Competitive Enterprise Institute poll found only 17% would spend $1 to $10 a month on the issue. A New York Times/Siena College poll in September found that two-thirds of likely voters supported increased domestic fossil fuel production. 

Despite Trump’s campaign promise to end support for offshore wind, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said last week that the state will continue its efforts to build offshore wind farms. 

"Mark my words: We will show them. Because we're moving ahead. We'll show them," Healey said Tuesday at an event in Taunton, referring to skeptics generally. "We'll get this done, and people will be behind it,” Healey said, according to the Cape Cod Times. 

Two days after the election, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Democrats and co-chairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, said their commitment to the climate agenda was undeterred by Trump’s election victory. 

“The New York climate agenda doesn’t pause for elections,” Hochul said in a statement from the alliance. Grisham offered a similar commitment. “No matter the obstacles, our commitment will not waver, and our progress will not be stopped,” she said. 

Climate election deniers

Larry Behrens, director of communications for Power The Future, a nonprofit that advocates for energy, called these politicians and activists “climate election deniers.” 

“The fact that they are willing to ignore the voice of the American election proves that they are just as out of touch as we always knew they were. Americans went to the polls just three weeks ago, and the case for the environmental left was soundly rejected. They should be looking at ways to listen to the American public, instead of trying to subvert the election results,” Behrens told Just the News. 

The media may also continue to push the climate agenda, even as trust in media falls to an all-time low. 

Anti-fossil fuel groups directly fund many outlets, such as the Associated Press, and they fund organizations like the Covering Climate Now, which provide advocacy resources to reporters covering climate and energy. The organization partners with more than 600 news organizations and encourages reporters to be biased in reporting on climate change and energy. 

In the wake of the election, the organization doubled down on its calls for reporters to continue pushing the climate agenda. In its weekly newsletter, Covering Climate Now argued that Trump didn’t win the popular vote and therefore no voter mandate exists. 

“Climate news may get folded into existing stories more. If so, it will be more important than ever that all journalists, not just dedicated climate reporters, make the climate connection to the news of the day, whether it’s extreme weather or mass deportations, affordable insurance or public health,” the organization advised the reporters at its 600 partner outlets. 

Obstacles

Anti-fossil fuel organizations, such as the NRDC, also have a lot of money at their disposal to file lawsuits and pay for favorable press – far outspending oil and gas companies and industry groups. Hoffman said that we can expect they’ll be active in opposing any rollbacks of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies. 

“These climate election deniers are certainly going to be in resistance mode. That's to be expected for the next four years. They're not going to be partners in cooperation to President Trump's energy-abundance agenda. They're going to be obstacles,” she said. 

Hoffman added that there may be fissures within the climate movement, however. Trump and his Cabinet picks are supportive of the development of nuclear energy, which many environmental organizations, such as the NRDC, oppose. 

The heating up of rhetoric may also further alienate the public and allies. At a recent forum at the Harvard Kennedy School following the conclusion of COP29, former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said that the world needs to declare a “climate emergency.” 

“We need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet, to everybody,” he said. The comments have been widely ridiculed. 

Behrens said, despite their insistence that public opinion isn’t turning against their agenda, their rhetoric won’t change the direction energy and climate policy will take under a second Trump administration. 

“President Trump's victory was so resounding that it's going to be difficult for anyone with a straight face to say the American family wants this trial subscription of the green New Deal that they've been under for the last four years to continue,” Behrens said.